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36 comments on “Australia to the polls”

Hmm .. Kevin Rudd beats Tony Abbot in personal popularity polls .. but Australian Commonwealth elections are decided in the marginal electorates which – according to Australian media – favour the conservatives.

Don’t hold your breath .. but it won’t be as boring as listening to speeches by our political blow-ins, Key & Shearer.

It won’t be just Abbott making decisions. The place will be crawling with advisers, among them our old mates Textor & Crosby. Conservative politics over here may find that all their heavy hitters are chasing more lucrative options over there ..

I wonder how much extra money it will cost the Australian taxpayer because Rudd has chosen to hold the election on 7 September rather than the 14th September that Gillard nominated more than 6 months ago?
You can be sure that the election officials would have already arranged and committed to pay for tens of thousands of places to use for polling, and will now have to hurriedly try and arrange new bookings for an election a week earlier. The only reason I can see to move the date would seem to be to be able to say “I’m different”, or I changed it “because I can” or, possibly to try and mess up the Coalition planning of meetings.
In any event it seems a huge waste of preparations for no gain to the Australian population.
I much prefer the approach Key took last election, and which Gillard adopted. Announce the date early in the year and stick to it.

Rudd has also made it very clear that he sees future conflict of some sort for hegemony in the Pacific region and that his Australia will be as much on the side of the US and A as Howard’s was. Apart from speaking Mandarin, his approach to the PRC is pretty much the same as Key’s.

If they did spend large amounts of money on the assumption that the election would be held on the 14th then it’s pretty dumb. It’s a pretty fundamental constitutional right of the PM to choose the election day.

Perhaps you could run that past the Australian embassy for a suitable diplomatic comment.
I think you will find that most politically aware people in Australia – including the Australian Electoral Commission – have been following the national political shadow play very closely and will
have little trouble changing the date of whatever arrangement with the local community and/or school hall ..

Essentially he, rightfully in my view, paints this election as not only Rudd v Abbott but also Murdoch v Australia’s democracy and cites the Murdoch press treatment of Labor’s proposed bank insurance scheme as evidence of how Murdoch is willing to lie and cheat and distort to try and get his own way.

In a particularly withering piece of prose Parker says:

Just how this sensible, moderate and prudential policy idea could be twisted into Rudd Raids Battlers’ Bank Accounts’ is testament to the utter corruption of the Murdoch media and the preparedness of its editors to distort news coverage to advance the commercial and ideological agenda of their expatriate boss.

The Murdoch apologists, of course, will defend his papers with the line that they are pursuing the sort of vigorous, take-no-prisoners tabloid journalism that holds governments to account. That’s fine, but journalism that twists facts, omits key information and manipulates public emotion to achieve ideological ends for powerful interests is not journalism at all.

I think if Australia is anything like NZ people are rapidly losing faith in mainstream media lies and reaching their own conclusions about politics and politicians. At least that’s my hope for NZ and Australia.

Australian politics has a history of internecine waka leaping. Howard himself got booted as leader of the Liberal Party by Peacock. Only to come back to the leadership and score a post-WWII record term (I think) prime ministership.

Go Turnbull. Abbott is a pig with contempt for the 99%. Mostly, go Kevin. I speak in terms of the lesser of evils of course.

Howard served for about 11 years and 9 months. He was the second longest serving Australian PM ever.
He was however a very long way short of Robert Menzies. Menzies’ second term was from December 1949 to January 1966. That is 16 years and 1 month. He also had a couple of years as PM from 1939 to 1941.

Out of interest, why is no-one talking about the not-too-bad poll on TVNZ? The one suggesting the ‘Man Ban’ fiasco and the constant strifing by the tubulent left hasn’t actually bothered the electorate too much, and hinting that a left coalition might be with in a whisker of power? Do we only discuss Bad News For Shearer here?

I haven’t seen anyone link to it in comments – you could try doing something proactive like writing a comment in OpenMike about it rather than just moaning about it in an unrelated post.

If you’re talking about authors then remember three things. It was published on the weekend, when most of the authors are lackadaisically doing other stuff (like having a life). Most of the authors watch the Morgan poll far more than the others because it happens every two weeks – frequently enough to see trends rather than being a bimonthly blip. Finally even hinting about what authors should write about is dangerous – read the policy.

Although we might be talking about different ones … the one I saw had Labour static even after Shearer played his trump card (or had last roll of dice, or any other game cliche). The Greens, meanwhile, picked up 100,000 supporters simply by being everything Shearer/Labour aren’t – “politically competent” would cover it.

There is not really that much difference between the policies of the ALP, Coalition or even the Greens. It is a sad state of affairs when a party led by a redneck who was a minister in Joh Bjilke-Petersen’s state government has the most left wing economic policies.

Rudd will win. While there are people that dislike him, they dislike Tony Abbott even more. It will be Turnbull that will be the long term winner out of this election. The Liberals will have no option but to go begging back to him.

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